The Senate Intelligence Committee grilled three of President Donald Trump’s nominations for key intelligence roles Wednesday in the first set of major appointments that stem from surveillance reform passed in 2015. While Congress members hurled questions at three career law enforcement and intelligence officials, the hearing revealed competing priorities between Congress and the Trump administration over intelligence leaks.
If Wednesday’s two-panel hearing is any indication, whistleblowers will have to navigate murky waters under the Trump administration.
Trump’s picks are all fixtures in the intelligence community. He tapped DOJ Inspector General Robert Storch to be the NSA’s first independent watchdog, as mandated by the Intelligence Authorization Act for 2014; Isabel Patelunas of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service to be the assistant secretary at the Treasury Department’s intelligence division; and intelligence careerist Susan Gordon, currently the deputy director at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, to be the deputy director at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees the entire intelligence community.
During the two-hour proceeding, the committee made its priorities clear for the nominees: allegiance to the American people (and the committee); commitment to ongoing Russia investigations and the Trump administration’s involvement; keeping an eye on North Korea’s missile program; and balancing containing leaks while ensuring whistleblower protections. (There was no discussion of the ongoing NSA’s controversial 702 database program, revealed through leaks from the agency’s former contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.)
Storch, who heads a group that focuses on whistleblower protections at the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity, was grilled the most about what he’ll do to address leaks and whistleblower protections. And it became clear that, if confirmed, Trump’s pick for NSA watchdog would specialize in fostering avenues and safe spaces for would-be leakers to come forward within government instead of going to the media.
“It’s a great concern when information is not properly secured,” Storch told Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), acknowledging her point that government contractors, such as Edward Snowden, have been a major source of the leaks in recent years.
Storch, who has led a culture shift at the Justice Department regarding how whistleblowers are perceived, switched tones when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked him to explain the difference between the whistleblower protections for a contractor versus a federal employee.
In a meandering response, Storch said there was no difference in how the protections should be applied, concluding that “people throughout the government should feel comfortable coming forward with information.”
Almost cutting him off, Wyden quipped: “You’ll hear from me again on this topic. I think it needs to be a priority.”
The hearing highlighted an ongoing conflict within government: how long surveillance agencies’ leash should be and how far agencies should go to protect people who spill its most closely guarded secrets.
The Obama administration was hawkish on surveillance liberties and moderate on reform efforts. As one of his final acts before leaving office, Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence, saying that her seven-year sentence was sufficient punishment. Trump could likely continue — or intensify—that trend of harshly punishing whistleblowers.
The president has previously commented that leakers were “traitors” who should be killed. Trump also instructed a crackdown on leakers and journalists within his administration regarding his campaign’s connections with Russian officials during the 2016 election. And with just six months in office, Trump has jailed his first intelligence leaker.
The Justice Department filed criminal charges against 25-year old contractor Reality Leigh Winner, who allegedly shared confidential NSA documents describing election-related cyberattacks carried out by Russian intelligence with The Intercept. Winner is being charged under the Espionage Act and could face up to 10 years in prison.
Meanwhile, Storch believes that, while information should stay within agencies rather than get leaked to the media, whistleblowers shouldn’t face retaliation for coming forward.
“Whistleblowers perform an invaluable service to the public when they come forward with what they reasonably believe to be evidence of wrongdoing, and they never should suffer reprisal for doing so,” Storch said in a statement to the U.S. House of Representatives’ oversight committee earlier this year, adding that they have a “critical role in bringing forward information to the OIGs or other appropriate recipients so that it can be looked into and any appropriate action taken.”
Storch echoed those same sentiments in Wednesday’s hearing.
“Agencies are too big and their operations too varied for oversight to function without people on the front lines being willing to come forward when they see something they believe is wrong,” he said in his opening remarks. “It is critical that employees and contractors know that there are avenues available for them.”
While Storch took the most questions when it came to whistleblowers, strong foreshadowing of the Trump administration’s view on leaks came from Gordon’s solo panel. If confirmed, Gordon would sit at the head of the U.S. intelligence community (IC) alongside DNI Dan Coats.
Things took a decidedly more relaxed tone in the second panel for Gordon’s testimony. Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) were the only members left and their ease and familiarity with Gordon was punctuated by frequent, lighthearted references to college sports. Before dismissing her, Burr asked Gordon about her commitment to stopping the “plague” of intelligence leaks in the community.
Her response: “Leaks, people deciding to go their own way, are not in this nation’s interest.” Burr closed the hearing by assuring her that the committee would move quickly to confirm her.